


Your Name Carved in Stone

by Cirth



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Super Sons (Comics)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Asexual Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Jon is confused, M/M, Racism, poor dami gets his ass kicked multiple times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-06-29 15:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19832761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cirth/pseuds/Cirth
Summary: “Think clean thoughts, Robin.”It was an outrageously old-fashioned choice of words, and it took Damian a few moments to realise, with creeping embarrassment, what his father meant.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As far as I know, Damian’s birth country has never been mentioned, so I went with Egypt (this, of course, has nothing to do with Ra's and Talia's birth countries). On a similar note, various sources online say that Nanda Parbat is in Tibet, but the name itself is based on Nanga Parbat, which is in Pakistan. So I've gone with that.

**Your Name Carved in Stone**

Damian is sixteen the first time he kisses someone.

Lorna is in his chemistry class, and she likes tea and debates and rock songs from the 60’s. Damian finds poetry in her smooth pale skin and laughing eyes, and when she smiles at him in the hallway, it takes a beat for him to look away.

(His mother would have yanked his ear and said, _You are too young, you should focus on your work, there will be time enough for girls later._ Part of him agrees. Another just wishes to defy her.)

When Lorna leads him by the hand to the tool shed at the edge of the school soccer field, he lets her, because he is old enough, by American standards, to be overdue for a kiss, and his brothers won’t stop teasing him about it.

They lean in, and Damian gets a whiff of Lorna’s powdery perfume. Her lips are cool and soft against his, sticky with lip gloss that tastes of peaches. It is vaguely off-putting, but a thrill shoots up his spine when he realises how much taller he is than her – he’d hit his growth spurt at the tail end of fourteen, much to Drake’s dismay and Richard’s subsequent (and obnoxious) howls of laughter.

Damian does not know where to put his hands – kissing isn’t like aikido – so he settles them awkwardly on her waist.

She squirms, and seems to take this as an invitation to push her hips against his. Damian makes a surprised sound and pulls back. “Wait,” he says

Lorna frowns. “What happened?”

“This is...not necessary.”

She raises an eyebrow. The sunlight catches her lashes and turns them gold. Her blouse is rumpled, the first two buttons undone. Damian is stuck staring at the swell of her breast, with growing apprehension.

“Is kissing not enough?” he tries.

It turns out to be the wrong thing to say, because Lorna’s jaw tightens with anger and she huffs before turning around and marching outside.

Damian is left alone, dithering, surrounded by rusty old rakes and empty pots.

(Richard would have wailed, “That’s not how you talk to girls!” Drake would have rolled his eyes. Jon would have buried his face in his hands and called him emotionally constipated.)

All Damian knows is that the kiss was tepid and when Lorna, whom he liked and respected, put her hands on him, he recoiled, where other boys would have been far more...receptive. 

Perhaps his upbringing is to blame. The League left no room for trysts; it barely left room for friendship.

He touches his mouth, and his fingers come away sticky. He stares at them, at the sheen of Lorna’s lip gloss, uncomprehending.

He needs time. Yes, he needs time. 

***

(The dust had not settled yet.

Damian wiped the sweatdirtblood out of his eyes, his gauntlet catching in his hair. They’d just finished a mission with the Justice League, and he was squinting at Wonder Woman. He had been Robin for four years, but he still pondered on how Diana fought with her long hair untied, how it didn’t get in her face all the time, and if she didn’t care that most of her body had no protection whatsoever. There had to be some kind of magic or advanced science afoot, and Damian, for one, was champing at the bit to know what it was.

Callused fingers closed around his jaw, and then his father was turning his head aside, the wry look on his face visible even beneath the cowl. “Think clean thoughts, Robin.”

It was an outrageously old-fashioned choice of words, and it took Damian a few moments to realise, with creeping embarrassment, what his father meant.

“It’s rude to stare, and you’re too young,” his father said, with an expression Richard had dubbed ‘the Jeeves look’, and grasped Damian by the scruff of the neck and propelled him away.

Damian sputtered, “Unhand me, Batman, what is this? Let me go!”

His father said, half-amused, “You’re not the first boy I raised, Damian – your old man isn’t _so_ old that what makes us human has changed.”)

***

There is a girl lying on her back on the floor of the dog shelter Damian volunteers at every Thursday, covered in puppies and cackling. A mutt is tugging at the hem of her jeans, growling and wagging its tail.

Damian crouches down, holds out his fingers, and whistles. After a bit of persistence, about half the puppies trundle over to him, yipping and licking at his hands, and he tries and fails not to feel smug. The girl looks at him, brushes hair from her face, and says with a breathless grin, “Show off,” in a South Asian accent – Delhi, if he had to place it.

He runs into her next week at Ivy University’s students’ union. She is writing in a spiral notebook in the cafeteria, clad in a tattered maroon sweatshirt with ‘Maahi Khanna’ printed in large white letters on the back. Damian leans against a wall, and does not have to try for an easy smile. “Hello, Indian,” he says by way of greeting, to trouble her. It is a shot in the dark, but Damian is quite certain.

“Hey, Pakistani,” she returns serenely, without looking up. He already likes her.

“Not exactly.”

She does raise her head then, arching her eyebrows in polite curiosity.

“I was in Pakistan till I was ten, but I was born in Egypt.” He remembers the tabloids that gleefully divulged his (severely watered down) background with exaggerated horror or sympathy, indicating that he’d been deprived of the American lifestyle owed to him by his lineage. It is common knowledge now, among Gothamites, along with his father’s rendezvous and escapades.

She returns her attention to her notebook with a small smile. “Good to know.”

Maahi is twenty-one, a year older than him, and majoring in Communications; she’d moved to the US from Delhi for university. She reminds him of Jon, with the same tolerance for Damian’s less palatable personality traits – which is to say, none.

Two weeks after they meet, she cooks kathal biryani for him, or tries to. The fire alarm goes off and they end up scrambling outside in the autumn chill, surrounded by other disgruntled students and shivering.

Despite himself, Damian actually finds it funny. “Such a bad daughter you are,” he mock-chides, while she glares at him and stamps her feet to warm up. “You aren’t studying medicine, you cut your hair short, you can’t cook – who will marry you?”

She kicks at his shin, but there is mirth in her eyes. “ _Chutiya_. Make me falafel, then you can criticise my cooking.”

“Ooh, she swears. What will all the aunties say?”

Maahi scrubs at a yellowish stain on the front of her jacket with a finger, scowling like it had personally offended her. “They’ll say, ‘ _Haii_ , she invited a boy to her dorm?’”

Damian hunkers down, putting his face in his hands to muffle his laughter. As he uncurls, tears on his lashes, he says, “Would it help if I were a girl?”

During the year’s final semester, Maahi sits with a cup of coffee on his bed, going over her notes. They just turn up at each other’s dorms now, without prior notice, and their flatmates meet them with fond exasperation or outright annoyance. (Mason, whose room is across from Damian’s, is convinced they are secretly in a relationship.) They don’t even always talk to each other; sometimes they just bring their textbooks over and settle in with their earphones.

Damian, absent-minded, sings along softly to Fairuz while touching up a painting at his easel. A few minutes in he stops and asks, sheepish, “You don’t mind, do you?”

She takes off her glasses, a strange expression on her face, and holds his gaze a beat too long for propriety. “You have a lovely voice.”

Damian does not often sing in front of people, though his mother had made him sit through lessons. Singing makes him feel vulnerable; there is no covering up your emotions, no pretence of stoicism. His face heats at her praise. He wonders what it would be like to walk arm in arm with her, or embarrass her by kissing her cheek.

Then he admonishes himself, because he does not desire her, and if he does not desire her, he should not indulge in behaviours with her that could be considered romantic. Human nature mandates that any attraction towards a person must be accompanied by sexual feelings. Anything else is friendship.

Later that night, Damian sits cross-legged on his bed, and with difficulty and awkwardness pictures Maahi’s body. He tries to pay attention to the dip of her waist, the curve of her hips, but he keeps coming back to the way she always laughs silently and with her eyes squeezed shut, the way she raises an eyebrow when she thinks something is foolish.

Something must be wrong with him.

He drags his laptop over, consults the search engine over the matter. Why would one not harbour sexual feelings for someone you otherwise like? Again and again, the websites repeat three possibilities: 1. You are not attracted to someone. 2. You dislike that person. 3. You have a hormonal imbalance.

The second is out. The first is confusing and vague, and the third is...somewhat concerning, if unlikely.

Damian is left with his fingers on the keyboard in the semi-darkness of his room, frustrated at himself. When he became Robin, under Richard’s guidance, he changed in so many ways. Why can he not change now? He’s Wayne. He’s al Ghul. He’s _League_. Something so natural to his species should not be so difficult to experience.

With great reluctance, he comes to the conclusion that he cannot want to be with Maahi, because wanting someone should not be this perplexing.

Despite knowing that Murphy’s law is bogus, he doubts himself when the next day Maahi asks, rubbing the back of her neck, if he would consider going to that nice Thai place on the waterfront for dinner with her. A date.

He wants to. He wants them to talk and laugh and fight over the bill, as mundane as can be, and then walk by the river, holding hands.

He bites back a curse.

He says no.

Maahi clears her throat and stammers, _Uh, sure, I understand_ , and gives a brittle smile.

He apologises. Everything feels wrong.

When she walks away, hugging her waist, he stares at her as a drowning man would at a safety line that slipped through his fingers.

***

He does not stop talking to Maahi, but their visits to each other’s dorms grow thin, and it does not take long for their flatmates to start whispering amongst themselves. Damian is at the kitchen table one afternoon, catching up on the news in Gotham on his phone, when Mason collapses next to him with a whuff, spreading his knees. “I heard about Maahi. Sorry, man, that must suck.”

Damian has no idea how Mason knows about them; it wasn’t even like they were official. He blames the gossip mongers.

“Was the sex good, at least?”

“We didn’t…” Damian trails off. Why is he explaining himself? And what can you say, when it is more normal to walk into Walmart and buy a gun than to not want sex?

Mason gives a sympathetic look, like Damian’s dog just died. “You can’t blame yourself, buddy. South Asian girls can be prudes, ya know? And anyway, aren’t Indians and Pakistanis, like, mortal enemies or something?”

Damian goes still, like a man who is unexpectedly backhanded and hasn’t begun to feel the sting yet. He is aware, vaguely, that he is taken aback and a little sickened, but he cannot turn the emotions into words. Mason prattles on, twirling a strand of hair around his finger, but Damian does not hear him.

***

When Damian tells Richard he wishes to change his superhero identity to Flamebird, the man gives one of those small, tender smiles that usually only show up when they are alone. “What about Robin?”

Damian rubs his lower lip with a finger. He will miss Robin, but he is too old to keep acting as sidekick to Batman. Nor does he want the cowl – that obsession had waned by the time he hit his late teens. He is not as good a detective as his father, anyway. “Baba has worked without a Robin before.”

Richard snorts. “Yeah, for an entire, whopping year before he met me.” He pauses, tilting his head to one side. “You’re sure you don’t want to team up with me? Nightwing and Flamebird – pretty much meant to be.”

Damian pushes aside the wistfulness in his chest. “I had considered it. But I’d like to try to make it on my own.” The plan is to work at a clinic – he didn’t graduate summa cum laude with a Veterinary Sciences degree for nothing.

“Metropolis, huh.” Richard smiles again, eyes crinkling, drawing attention to the flecks of grey at his temples, and Damian is once again struck by how much older Richard is, how a touch of weariness has made a home in him. Yet he is still the same, laughing man who’d donned the cape and cowl and given Damian the brother he didn’t know he needed. “Jon’ll be happy to hear that,” he says, giving Damian a knowing look; he’d always said Jon and Damian bickered like an old couple.

“Jon,” says Damian primly, “is still at BU. Let me know when you finally marry Bertinelli, I’ll be sure to come to Bludhaven.”

Richard sputters. “We’re not – ”

“Oh, stuff it, I saw you two on a roof the other night. Can you at least try to keep your makeout sessions indoors?”

“How long have you known?”

“I know you’ve been making puppy eyes at her since you infiltrated Spyral and then moped around and dated other women for _years_ because you thought she wouldn’t want your younger, stupider, more impressionable ass.”

Richard’s eyes are the size of dinner plates. “ _Jesus_ , Damian.”

“Just saying.”

“I think you’ve been spending too much time with Tim.”

“Perish the thought.”

Richard suddenly grins. “Can’t wait to catch _you_ feeling someone up on a rooftop, baby bro. That day is near, I can feel it.”

Damian chokes on his spit and pounds his chest. He’s laughing. He keeps laughing till he slides out of his chair onto the floor and Richard asks, with a concerned, slightly terrified expression, if he’s all right, and Damian says, _Yes, yes, I’m all right, God, fuck. I’m just fine._

***

Metropolis’ villains, on the whole, are a nice change of pace from Gotham’s scheming bunch of murderous clowns. The most exciting thing that happens to him is being yanked out of the air mid-jump by a worried Superman, who thought Damian was a civilian trying to go splat on the asphalt and decided to hold him in what is apparently called a ‘bridal carry’. There were stammered apologies and wry looks, and a solemn promise to never mention it again. Ever.

One evening Damian drags himself home from the clinic and goes to his room, and there is Jon Lane Kent sitting cross-legged on the bed, wearing Damian’s jeans and Ivy University T-shirt and eating pop tarts. Damian hasn’t seen him in months. The window is still wide open, its alarms dismantled. (When did the man get this wily?)

“Jon, what the fuck?” he sputters, more amused than indignant but unwilling to let it show. It is good to be reminded of their closeness, even if they had drifted while they were in college.

“I didn’t have any clean clothes,” Jon whines around a mouthful of pop tart. 

“That’s bullshit, your mother always made you do the laundry.”

“But I’m working now and she’s not there to tell me to do it.”

Damian remembers. Jon had been talking, during their last phone call, about being an associate editor at some big-name publishing house. He clicks his tongue. “How will you survive on your own?”

Jon flutters his eyelashes at him. The intended effect is somewhat diluted by the crumbs on his chin. “I can live off your kindness?”

“More like leech off my living.”

“ _Hey!_ ”

Damian turns around and pretends to be engrossed in some documents on his desk so Jon won’t see his smile.

***

It is weeks before Damian finds the type of rabble he is used to taking out.

A cartel that produces and distributes a dangerous new drug, in affiliation with Blüdhaven. No one suspects it to be based in a city like Metropolis, one of the shining lights of America. But Superman lives in Kansas now, and is spread thin by his work with the JLA; shady, Gotham-esque criminals are not as leery of coming here as they used to be.

Damian is ducking out of his apartment in full gear through his window when there is a faint rustle behind him. “What are you doing here, Superboy?” he says, turning around and standing on the narrow cement ledge.

Jon’s face is closed off, half melted into shadow. There isn’t a trace of mirth or uncertainty in it, and Damian is struck with a reminder that Jon is _grown_ now, six-foot-three and capable of crushing a tank with his bare hands. “This isn’t your city, Flamebird,” Jon says.

He speaks without rancour, but Damian’s hackles rise. “So I should just let a dangerous drug cartel carry about its business?” he hisses. “Gotham was never my city, either, but I swore to protect it anyway.”

Jon’s expression softens, and he lowers himself so he is on the ledge as well, so close that Damian can smell his aftershave, the same one he’s used since he was seventeen. “So you should let me help you,” he says, resting his warm, firm hands on Damian’s shoulders. It is not a demand, but it is not a request either. Jon’s eyes are pleading and honest and an endless, otherworld-blue, standing out even in the semi-darkness in his freckled face.

Damian is silent, unable to tear his gaze away from those eyes, and then nods, wondering why his well of words has suddenly dried up.

***

Jon keeps nagging at Damian to _fraternise_.

“What are you, my mother-in-law?” Damian snips at him. “Get off my case.”

Jon doesn’t let up, though, so Damian more often than not ends up at the edge of a group consisting of Jon and his motley bunch of friends and colleagues, scowling at Metropolis news on his phone or whining to Maya over text while the rest of them chatter.

Today, they are lounging in Jon’s living room with one of his coworkers, Michael, known as ‘Mikey’ to Jon and ‘This blister on the ass of the species’ to Damian. Jon munches a turkey sandwich at the table while Damian nurses cup of coffee, curled up at the window sill. Michael seems to have a social life that is bizarre to Damian, whose idea of ‘a night out’ consists of getting burgers with Jon or visiting his father.

“You party much, Damian?” Michael is saying. He is seated across from Jon, a wide grin on his face. At the question, Jon chokes and thumps his chest, coughing.

Damian shrugs. “Not my scene.”

Michael makes a face. “ _Please_ tell me you’re not one of those weird, sad freaks who never have sex and spend their lives holed up in their offices with paperwork. How long has it been since you got naked with someone?”

Maahi’s twinkling eyes come to mind, faded like an old Polaroid. Damian sips his drink, welcoming the burn on his tongue. He knows the sharp judgement that will come with saying, _Never. I’ve never wanted it_ , so he says, “Years,” even though he hates liars. 

Jon’s face is carefully blank – and for a second Damian wonders if he _knows_ – but Michael looks at him with undisguised horror. “The hell? For real?”

“I see no reason for it to be so – “

“Not on my watch!” Michael leaps up and goes over to Damian, dragging him up by the arm. Damian is so surprised he lets him. “Friends don’t let friends turn into crusty old men who haven’t done the do in half a century.”

 _You’re not my friend_ , Damian wants to snap, but that is something his angry, hurting, ten-year-old self would say, so he blinks slowly and hopes the implied eye-roll is obvious only to Jon. Apparently, it is, because Jon takes a massive bite of his sandwich to conceal his grin.

“It’s settled then,” says Michael, oblivious, whipping out his phone from his pocket and typing away furiously. “We are going out tonight, and we are getting you laid.”

Damian scowls. “I don’t want to – “

“I know a guy, super handsome, tall, blond, currently an analyst at a big-four firm. Name’s David. Oh, good, he just said yes. Bunker, 8 o’ clock. It’s a great place, got a bar and everything.”

This is how Damian finds himself at an overcrowded club midtown, plastered to Jon’s side and clutching a glass of whiskey that had been shoved into his hands with a “You just need to get drunk and let it happen” from Michael. Damian has not touched a drop of alcohol in his life, and he won’t start now.

When David shows up, leather jacket and skin-tight trousers and all, Michael barely takes the time to introduce them before disappearing into the huddle of swaying bodies, dragging Jon with him, and Damian takes a moment to mourn the loss of his moral support.

David is looking at him with unabashed appreciation. He _is_ handsome, with those classical, chiseled features one sees on Renaissance statues, but Damian is unmoved, finding the jut of his jaw a bit too proud, his eyes a bit unkind.

He puts his whiskey on the floor, along with a clutter of empty glasses, and tries to look apologetic. Before he can get a word in edgeways, David takes his hand and pulls him towards the back of the club, into a corridor lit by tube lights that leads to a storage closet. Damian has always appreciated people getting to the point, but this seems somewhat excessive. 

He smooths down his shirt and clears his throat, uneasy under the weight of those pale blue eyes. “Pardon me, I’m not actually interested. Michael was being dense.”

David’s movie-star smile is blinding. “You not into men?”

 _Not you._ “I am.” Damian doesn’t see how that’s relevant.

David, heedless of Damian’s earlier claim, cards a hand through Damian’s hair, rests it on the nape of his neck. The pads of his fingers are dry and cushion-soft, like the skin of a floured dumpling. “I can change your mind about not being interested.” His breath smells of beer and peanuts. He tilts his head to one side, brow furrowing, as though he is trying to pick Damian apart; it is an unsettling look. “You Persian?”

Damian is so taken aback at the question he blurts out, “Half Arab-Chinese,” and then wonders why he didn’t just say “no”.

“Knew you looked so interesting for a reason.” David’s grin is full of teeth.

The world goes hazy around the edges. Damian is reminded sharply of a mission he’d been on when he was thirteen. He’d been in civvies, using himself as bait (against Batman’s orders) to locate a criminal called William Bates, who even the likes of the Riddler and Penguin steered clear of. Damian’s plan was to bring them down from the inside, alone; fury tended to make him reckless. 

He was familiar with the chaos of the Joker and the greed of Black Mask: cartoonish villains that were less cartoonish when you were on the business end of a pistol and there were disemboweled corpses strewn around you, still cooling. Still, it was the kind of evil he expected.

But he had never before butted heads with the human trafficking underworld of Gotham, and while he was used to dealing with death, he was not used to dealing with...this. 

He’d been shot in the calf and knocked out with chloroform, and had woken up fettered to a chair in a bare, windowless room, his leg bandaged but bleeding sluggishly. Bates stood before him, a cigarette in his mouth, this, this _scum_ who kidnapped women and children from Asian countries and sold them to Gotham’s crime lords. Damian’s brain was muddled enough for him to spit out a curse in Arabic – a blunder he would never have made in his right mind.

Bates raked his gaze over him, and then bent down, grasped Damian’s chin, and said lowly, “You know how much mixed kids are worth, boy?”

Rage that tore through him like wildfire and unexpected, animal fear warred within Damian. His eyes stung from the smoke, but he refused to flinch, refused to show that the hairs were standing on his skin.

“We’ll have to disappoint whichever girl you were promised to when you were eight,” Blake continued in a mock-sympathetic tone. 

(After Nightwing saved him, in a flurry of escrima sticks and blood and snarls, Damian barely processed the scathing dressing down he received, still shuddering from the feeling of Bates’ fingers on him _._ )

David is leering at him with the same brand of hunger.

“Please,” says Damian, “take your hand off me.”

David frowns. “What?”

Damian removes the offending limb from his neck and takes a step back. “This was a mistake.” On so many levels.

David only chuckles, his frown turning into a half-sneer. He affects a tone that manages to be both patronising and pitying. “Oh, cut the blushing virgin act, cutie. Sex isn’t a cardinal sin.” As if Damian doesn’t know that.

He turns to leave, deciding he is charitable enough to not rip out David’s larynx, but David’s hand shoots out to choke Damian’s wrist in a bruising grip.

The next second David is on the floor, groaning and cupping a hand below his broken nose, and Damian is back in the main area with the pulsing music and bluepurplewhite lights, bloodied knuckles shaking. He locates Jon at the bar, laughing with the full dose of Kent charm at something a woman in a red dress is saying. Michael is nowhere to be seen. Jon glances up when he sees Damian, and the smile fades from his face. “Dami?”

“I’m leaving.”

“What, already?” Something in Damian’s expression must show, because Jon stands up, looking worried. “Are you okay?”

Damian averts his eyes, pushes his hands in his pockets. “You want to come with me?”

Jon licks his lips. He searches Damian’s face, as if trying to pinpoint what has upset him, and if it is bad enough for his heat vision to get involved.

“I’m fine,” Damian says.

Jon’s expression morphs from wary to absolutely thunderous, the way it always gets when his friends are hurt or threatened, but then he takes a long breath and nods. That is for the best – Jon’s temper can result in worse than property damage; they learned that the hard way, over the years. “Let’s go.”

The crisp night air does him good, and he breathes deep. They get veggie kebabs from a truck by the park and sit on a damp bench, watching cars go by. Jon is uncharacteristically silent, his jaw tight and his features pinched.

At length Damian sighs and says, “Kent, if you think any louder, my eardrums will burst.”

Jon says through gritted teeth, his voice laced with guilt, “I’m really sorry that guy turned out to be a creep. I should have stopped Michael. He was being a pushy bastard.”

Trust Jon to blame himself for something he had nothing to do with. Damian scoffs, half endeared, half annoyed. “Don’t give yourself so much credit; I could have not showed up, if I wanted.”

Jon shakes his head, appearing frustrated. “Why’d you agree?”

Why, indeed. He tosses his empty stick into a nearby trash can. “I suppose he got to me,” he says.


	2. Chapter 2

It had been a hollow victory.

In Washington, the alien robots came in droves, standing three feet above the ground with spider-like legs and equipped with blasters that could kill a grown man. Every time Damian disabled one, it felt like three sprang up to take its place. He, Jon, and the Titans had run themselves ragged trying to save the civilians who hadn’t been evacuated and to control the bot army, while the JLA infiltrated the mothership above Earth.

The girl Damian had allowed to die had been small, barely up to his hip, clutching a ragged stuffed doll. His first mistake was saying, _You’re safe with me._ His second was believing it. His third was not watching his back, because he’d taken out all the enemies in that area.

He did not see or hear the bot till it shot her in the belly, just as she grasped his hand. The force of the blow had knocked her off her feet, ripping her icy little fingers from his.

After he’d cloven the bot in half, he had gazed at her body, lying like a broken marionette on the red, red earth.

Tens of corpses, just like her.

Damian should have done more.

He’d been capable of doing more.

He wants to curl up, wants Richard here, to stroke his hair and tell him, _We can’t save everyone_ , like he is ten years old and Robin for the first time and starting to buckle under the stupefying weight of that name.

Jon staggers up to him, his chest heaving. There is slick blood on his cheek and all down the front of his uniform. Most of it does not seem to be his. Around them are strewn the dismembered remains of the defeated bots. “Are you,” Jon rasps, nails on a board, and then coughs, dry and painful sounding. He turns his face to the sky, slate-grey with smoke and dust, as though searching for God, before returning his attention to Damian. He opens his mouth to speak again.

One of the bots, which Damian thought he had disabled, raises itself on shaking legs and points its weapon at Jon’s back.

Damian reacts on instinct.

As he shoves the idiot out of the way, a thought comes to him, unbidden, that dying while protecting Jon is one of the best ways he could have gone.

It does not lessen the blinding pain, and he is sent flying into a crumbling wall, his head colliding with the cement. He must black out for a few seconds, because when he cracks open his eyes next, he is seeing stars and Jon is kneeling before him, yelling his name.

“You _moron_ ,” Jon says as soon as Damian is half aware of his surroundings, “why the hell did you do that? You remember I’m half-Kryptonian, right? That thing couldn’t have hurt me that bad!”

Damian does not understand. They have known each other for so long. What had Jon expected him to do? Damian slurs, “I swore t’your father I’d never put you in harm’s way,” because it is true, though he had not been thinking of that, and he knows the difference between putting someone in harm’s way and failing to save them.

Jon freezes, staring at Damian as he would at a battlefield. Then his face crumples and he bows his head and says, in a voice like he is being strangled, “You’re so _selfish_ , Dami.”

The Bat-trained part of Damian’s brain crying ‘ _No names in the field_ ’ is overridden by the part trying to comprehend what just came out of Jon’s mouth.

“Do you even _care_ how others would feel if something happened to you?” Jon is shouting now, his teeth lightning-bright against his dirt-streaked face. “Why is it that you just _don’t give a fuck_ that it would br – that a lot of us would be really upset? You _know_ how your family was after you died, so _why_?”

“I’m not worth getting upset over,” Damain snaps, before he can think it over, and regrets it, not because he doesn’t believe it, but because now Jon will probably not stop bellowing at him for the next hour. He braces himself, grimacing, but then notices the tears sliding down Jon’s face. He is floored. “Superboy?”

Jon’s fist smashes into the wall, next to Damian’s ear. Bits of concrete patter to the ground. “Bastard,” Jon says, voice trembling. The tears haven’t stopped. “You _bastard._ ”

He reaches forward and pulls Damian into an embrace, burying his face in Damian’s shoulder. Damian’s arms come up automatically, his palms resting on Jon’s back. They are drenched in sweat, covered in blood and all the filth of the battle, but Damian just closes his eyes, allowing exhaustion and the comfort of Jon’s presence to immerse him.

At length, they part, and Jon scrubs at his face with his sleeve. “Can you walk?” he says thickly.

Damian tries to shift, and winces. “I think my fourth and fifth ribs are broken. My left ankle is dislocated.” Once, he would have forced himself to refuse the help, back when he believed he was invulnerable, but even his body was not engineered for frequent abuse well into his twenties. What used to take him days to heal now takes weeks.

Wordlessly, Jon gathers Damian into his arms, making sure not to jerk him. “Let’s get you to a hospital,” he whispers, as though Damian is something terribly fragile. “You’re concussed.”

Damian allows himself to pass out again, trusting Jon to keep him safe. When he wakes up, he is being lowered onto a gurney, and right before he is taken away, Jon brushes his lips against Damian’s knuckles, feather-light.

***

Since the attack, Jon has had a faraway, unseeing look in his eyes – the same look worn by civilians who have for the first time witnessed someone being beheaded. Damian skirts around him, nervous and unsure of how to approach. It’s harder now, knowing what he _knows_ about himself. His knuckles still feel branded-hot.

“Did you eat today?” Damian says, cautious, as they finish tying up a bunch of illegal weapons traffickers at the docks. It has been nearly two months since the attack on Washington.

Jon shrugs. He waits for them to hightail it out of there before saying, “I’ve seen the way you look at me.”

Damian trips, swears, only manages to not skid across the sidewalk by grabbing onto a lamppost. He glances at Jon, once he has righted himself, heart hammering. “What?”

“You can’t,” Jon says, shuffling his feet, hunched, small despite his bulk. “You can’t _not_ know. After everything.” He bites his lip, hisses. “Do you know what they used to say to me? The other superheroes? You’re a sociopath. You’d betray us in a heartbeat. You’re al Ghul. You poison me.”

Damian wants to take the cord from his grapple gun and wrap it around his own neck.

“They said that from the start.” Jon laughs, wetly, like he is ill. “And you know what I thought? I thought of you nursing the small, sick bats to health in the Cave, when you thought no one was looking. I thought of you risking everything you’d built for yourself and acting as a double agent for your dad’s sake. I thought of you _dying_ , because you’d rather die than let anything happen to Nightwing.”

Damian’s eyes are open, but he isn’t seeing anything. He may as well be at the bottom of the ocean.

“I didn’t say anything,” continues Jon, digging his nails into his upper arm so hard his hand shakes, “except that if they talked about you like that again, I’d break their teeth.” He looks at Damian, eyes wide and glassy. “You’ve got to know. I…” He trails off, panting like he has flown the circumference of the solar system.

Something is stuck in Damian’s throat. His mind is nothing but noise. He does not know how long he stands there, silent as an empty house.

Jon steps forward, cups Damian’s cheeks. Damian had always known that Jon’s hands were big, but he hadn’t realised how soft, the healing factor preventing calluses. (Damian’s own hands are scarred and rough, have been since he was a child, always snagging on fine clothes and scratching skin.)

He cannot do this to Jon.

He turns his head aside.

Jon’s hands fall to his sides. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, sounding dazed, like he has been bludgeoned over the head with a mace of kryptonite. “I – I misread…”

Damian wants to gather Jon into his arms and bury his face in his neck. He wants to reach inside and rip out that part of himself that does not feel the way normal people feel.

He nods.

When his father invites him to stay at Wayne Manor for a weekend along with Richard and Drake, he is a little too quick to accept.

***

Fact: Damian has never considered sex important.

Fact: He has never been comfortable with the American brand of sexuality.

Fact: He grows selectively but hideously clingy to people.

Damian supposes he has always known. He should have gathered the evidence, made an analysis, and come to a neat conclusion.

As it stands, conclusions are rarely so neat and he requires some unintended help from Richard and Drake while they are all lounging in the TV room, Damian engrossed in his watercolour painting and not paying attention to the others’ conversation, until he hears his name.

Drake says, only half-joking, “Damian’s the most asexual person on the planet,” and Damian puts down his paintbrush and frowns, amid his brothers’ raucous laughter. He has heard of the term before, but never given it much thought; it was just another identity amid a sea of ‘something-sexuals’, and he was already attracted to more than one gender. Richard catching him doodling Colin’s face in his notebook like a love-struck girl when he was twelve had been embarrassing enough.

“Oh, come on, Timmers,” Richard says, grinning, while Damian is blinking away his entire perspective on the world. “He’d be a walking stereotype. _Sex is for the weak_ ,” he mimics in Damian’s solemn baritone.

Damian takes slow, deep breaths to calm his heart. He ignores Richard’s good-natured punch to his shoulder, followed by a, _Hey, you know we’re kidding right?_

Asexual.

He turns the word over in his head. It feels quiet. It feels welcoming. It feels like Titus’ charcoal fur beneath his fingers and the familiar, earthy wash of rooibos tea in his mouth.

It fills him with as much dread as comfort.

He conducts a Google search on his phone while his brothers continue to squabble, checking off the signs with increasing surety. (He should probably be alone for something like this, but he wants to know _now._ )

Then he gets to the comments section, and closes the tab, grateful he knows how to wipe his expression clean.

It appears he is a somewhat unwelcome specimen.

At dinner he eats mechanically, responding with monosyllables to Richard’s inane questions and Drake’s ribbing.

“All okay, Dami?” his father says, while the other two get into a heated argument about _Star Trek_ and situational ethics.

Damian pokes at his baked vegetables. “Fine.”

“Not liking the food?”

“It is adequate.”

“Girl trouble?” His father’s face is ruefully sympathetic. “Boy trouble?”

 _More like me trouble._ “No.”

“Well,” says his father, with an awkward but warm smile, “I’m here to rant to if you want.”

Damian nods and shovels broccoli into his mouth to have an excuse to not talk.

The next evening, in his room, he sits at his window sill, fingering the hem of his jalabiya.

As much as he would like to never talk about his recent discovery and keep his life simple, he is obliged to tell Jon. He is privileged enough to have a family that would never force him into ‘conversion therapy' (apparently one of the more extreme responses to admitting to asexuality). He should be grateful, rather than apprehensive that Jon will not understand.

Part of him wishes to consult Richard, but he and their father were abruptly called away for a JLA mission that morning – and Damian is not going anywhere near this topic with Drake.

His comm goes off, making him jerk. He curses and answers, and Oracle’s voice slices through. “Arkham breakout. Joker and Scarecrow, with several Amazo prototypes. Batgirl and the Signal in need of assistance in the city centre.”

Damian is already reaching for his katana.

***

Usually, when there is an Arkham breakout, Damian’s father is in Gotham – it is almost as if the inmates can smell when he’s around and decide whether or not to wreak havoc accordingly, like they enjoy pissing off the Batman more than they enjoy their freedom.

Damian has aided his father as Flamebird a few times, but not enough that anyone recognises him as “that bloodthirsty Robin with a _motherfucking sword_ ” (as Black Mask had once memorably called him), and as such, he strikes fear in approximately no one’s heart. Not that Amazos have much capacity for fear.

The one he’s fighting is particularly nasty, and quite simply refuses to go down. His katana is broken in half, and he is relying on his dwindling reserve of daggers and miscellaneous explosives. In a rather un-Batlike moment, he hopes ferociously that the Joker, wherever he has wormed himself into, has tripped and broken his neck.

“I’ve called for backup,” Oracle’s curt voice cuts through the comms.

 _What other fucking backup is available in this hell-city?_ Damian thinks, with a vicious stab to the Amazo’s ear. Todd is busting a drug ring in New York, Cain is out on a mission in Shanghai, and Bertinelli is off to Thimpu for some “super secret spy stuff”, as Richard had so eloquently put it.

The Amazo lets out a shriek of rage, electricity crawling over its form, and Damian jumps off, intending to attack from a distance.

He is caught, savagely, by the forearm. _Right_ _shoulder dislocated_ , he realises, faint, before the Amazo blasts him with heat vision.

He is thrown onto his back on the ground, the wind knocked out of him, and for a few moments lies there, stunned. When he looks down, there is a dark stain over his belly, where the gaping wound has already been cauterised.

 _Oh_ , he thinks.

It wasn’t all bad. Gotham was never quite his home, but he found Richard, vulnerable and joyful and fiercely intelligent, and his father, stern and strong and kind – his family. He found others he cared for, Colin and Maya and the Teen Titans.

He found Jon, Jon with his free smile and free heart and endless supply of second chances.

That counts for something. Yes. It does.

Damian is not afraid.

The Amazo’s eyes glow red. Damian waits for the blow. He’s definitely had worse than what’s coming – being almost torn in half with a sword while being riddled with arrows will put a new perspective on pain.

He’s already lost so much blood. It won’t take much now.

A blur of blue and red crashes right into his opponent, sending it flying into what sounds like a wall.

Damian is left flummoxed, unsure if he is hallucinating.

“ _Flamebird!_ ” cries a worriedangryfearful voice, which Damian is fairly certain belongs to Jon Kent. Why is Jon in Gotham? Doesn’t he know this is Batman’s city? Stupid Jon.

Jon’s face, sure enough, appears in Damian’s vision, and Damian wants to say, _Why are you here?_ but he's pretty sure he just makes an undignified gurgling sound.

“Oh God. Oh, no, no, no. Just...hold on, I’ll get you to Doctor Thompkins. Where are the other Bats?”

“You’re s’posed to be in Metropolis,” Damian slurs.

Jon’s face contorts, like he is hurt. Where is he hurt? Which bastard hurt him? Damian will make them wish he didn’t have a no-killing rule. “Oracle contacted me. You didn’t think I’d just leave you here alone? Batman doesn’t scare me.”

“But – ”

“Idiot,” Jon says, flushed with anger and exertion and something else, something simmering beneath the surface, tender and adoring. “You _idiot_. I’ve loved you far longer than I’ve been _in_ love with you.”

And he bends down and kisses him, and Damian is dazed and half-conscious but he closes his eyes and raises a trembling hand to cup Jon’s neck. He thinks they could be closer, so much closer, if only his arms moved properly and his legs did not feel dead. Something rises in his throat. He twists to the side and retches, and blood spatters on the filthy ground.

Everything blurs, and he registers a panicked, _Famebird? Flamebird!_ before he topples into unconsciousness.

***

He hears the heart monitor before he is fully awake.

When he pries open his eyes, he finds Jon slumped in a chair in the corner, asleep with his mouth open, and Richard on a stool by the bed, typing on his phone. He notices, vaguely, that there is a tube in his left arm. As soon as Richard hears the shift in the bed, he sits up with a little gasp. “Dami,” he says, getting to his feet and coming over to brush the hair off Damian’s forehead.

“Richard.” Damian’s voice is like sandpaper. He grasps his brother’s fingers, grateful for their warmth, their firmness.

“Don’t ever do that again,” Richard rasps, bringing their clasped hands to his cheek and kissing Damian’s knuckle, once, twice. His eyes are bloodshot, his lashes clumped. Guilt tears through Damian’s chest. “Bruce is still off-world, but he knows. He’ll be back as soon as he can.”

Behind Richard, a sallow-faced Jon is standing with his fists curling and uncurling, looking unsure of how to approach but resigned to his place. Richard seems to sense the apprehension, and shifts to make room for him.

Jon comes forward, his shoulders drooped as though carrying a great weight. “You scared me,” is what he says, quiet, tense as an arched bow.

Before either Damian or Richard can open their mouths, the door bursts open and Drake waltzes in, not bothering to look at any of them. “Jason flew in when he heard you were critical,” he says, sitting down on one of the chairs by the wall and primly swinging one knee over the other. “He visited while you were unconscious. Right now he’s off considering himself oppressed because he’s not allowed to kill while also being part of the Bat-clan. Tragic, I know.”

“Tim,” Richard warns.

Drake shrugs in a ‘What can you do?’ manner.

Richard scowls and turns to Damian. “He was unsettled when he found out about you. He got…”

“Murderous?” Jon puts in.

“...Upset,” Richard finishes with a sigh.

Damian’s head suddenly feels cloudy, and nausea blooms in his gut. When Jon leans over him, concerned, Damian opens his mouth to say something, anything, but then Dr. Thompkins strides in with a stethoscope around her neck. Everyone scrambles out of the way, and he is left to her mercy.

***

His father insists on him staying at the manor till he is fully recovered. After much sighing and groaning and rolling of eyes, Damian agrees. In the afternoon he watches TV and Richard watches him, biting his nails and not even pretending to be interested in the Korea–Japan trade war. Damian would snap at him, but Richard has been...overprotective, since the incident with the Heretic. So Damian allows him to fuss and fret and generally make a nuisance of himself.

He gets a kiss to the head for his trouble.

Two weeks after the Arkham breakout, at night, he is at his desk reading up on new methods of treatment for bone cancer in dogs, when there is a tap at his window, then another. He takes off his glasses, goes to open it, and says, “A little old to be throwing rocks, aren’t we?”

Jon descends gently into the room. He hasn’t even bothered to wear his costume, clad in an old T-shirt and jeans. His face is pale, his hair greasy. “About...that,” he says. He clears his throat. “I’m sorry, it was disrespectful of me. You already let me know you didn’t want me...but I still…”

“Don’t,” says Damian. “I wanted to.”

Jon turns to him, incredulous.

Damian blurts, “I don’t think I can be what you want,” before he can think the better of it.

Jon blinks, as though confronted with a person who refuses to understand a kindergarten-level concept. “I thought I made it clear you already are.”

“I’m not…” Damian does not know how be subtle about it. At length he pushes his hands into his pockets, fixes his gaze on an old watercolour painting of Titus above the bed, and says, “I’m asexual.”

There is a silence. Damian’s panic grows with every ticking second. He wants his sword, just to feel its weight in his hands, to fool his brain into thinking he can protect himself from rejection.

Jon says, “Is that all?”

Damian turns to him, and Jon has a small, crooked smile on his face. “Did you think that would deter me?”

“You don’t…” Damian sucks in a breath. “Mind? I’m saying I’ve never been sexually attracted to anyone. I never will be to you. Don’t you want someone who can satisfy your needs?” It is like chewing on rocks, admitting that, to Jon, to anyone, Damian might never be whole.

Jon barks a startled laugh. “My _needs_ are all met. I have food and water. I have a roof over my head. I have a support system many people can only dream of.” He looks at Damian, the light catching his earnest, too-wide eyes. “My _want_ is for you to be in my life, more than you already are. If you’ll have me.”

Damian’s mouth is dry. He shakes his head, disbelieving. He chokes out, “Of course. Of course I will.” He touches Jon’s throat, feeling it shift beneath his fingers. Jon laughs, yanks Damian into an embrace, then pulls back to look at him. 

His smile is brighter than the stars.

-end-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be deleted scenes.
> 
> Tumblr: lilaclotuses


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I deleted these scenes for one or more of these reasons:
> 
> \- They didn’t further the plot.  
> \- I didn’t know how to write around them.  
> \- They didn’t fit the tone of the story.  
> \- They conflicted with Jon or Damian’s characterisation. 
> 
> The scenes are in chronological order. You may recognise some dialogue/narration I lifted from the deleted scenes and placed in ‘official’ ones. My personal favourite is the one with the newspapers, towards the end.

**[Jon and Dami discuss Jon’s superhero name.]**

When they fight crime together, it’s exactly the same as before.

You’d _think_ that would be only a good thing, but Jon still calls himself _Superboy_ since his father hasn’t given up ‘Superman’, and Damian would suggest ‘Nightwing’ because of The Story, but that’s taken and far too serious for a dolt like Jon in the first place.

All said and done, a twenty-one-year-old man with the word ‘boy’ in his superhero name makes Damian want to take a hot poker and stab it into his eye.

“How about ‘Blue Bolt’?” he says, dragging up one of the snivelling men by the front of his shirt. He’d thought that drug-dealing pimps were endemic in Gotham, but it turns out Metropolis has its share of shady characters, too.

Jon makes a face. “But I’ve got red on my uniform.”

“It’s _mostly_ blue, and you’re pretty fast when you fly.”

“It sounds like a damn energy drink.” Jon hasn’t even moved from his place against the wall, ankles crossed and looking for all the world like he’s on lunch break. Damian has to stop himself from tearing his hair out and crying, _There are no lunch breaks when fighting crime!_

“Hey,” says the little weasel, and Damian looks down at him again. He doesn’t have to unsheathe his katana to be threatening anymore; being six-foot-two has its advantages. (It irks him no end that Jon ended up at six-foot-two-and-a- _half_ , and hasn’t shut up about it since.) Somehow, this guy missed the memo. “You look a lot like that Robin ki – ”

“Lights out,” Damian says hurriedly, and knocks him out with a swift punch.

Jon digs into his ear with his pinky. “‘The Hunter’?”

“Ugh, so not you. I’m thinking ‘Griffin’. Pays homage to your dual heritage. Also suits your strength.”

“What is this, flatter Jonathan Kent day?” Jon says with a crooked grin that makes a dimple dip in his cheek. There is a stray curl stuck to his forehead with sweat. Damian falters, for a moment, and then blinks. He bends down to finish tying up the pimp for the Metropolis police to find, wondering why his well of words has dried up.

***

**[It Starts Happening, and Damian is not into it.]**

Jon leans in slowly, giving Damian time to pull back. To say no. Damian is frozen, his brain turned to smoke, and when Jon kisses him time falls away and the world falls away and the bones in his legs are replaced with jelly. Jon’s scruff burns the side of Damian’s face, and it should be off-putting but it is only intimate, visceral like the first time you slide a blade through someone’s throat.

The kiss itself is just all right, but it’s _Jon_ , _Jon is kissing him, Jon wants him_ , so Damian loops his arms around the other man’s neck, giddy with happiness. Jon makes a short, pleased sound.

He doesn’t even realise he’s being lowered until his back rests against the bed, and he blinks open his eyes only to shut them again when Jon pushes his fingers through his hair, massaging his scalp, and he melts beneath it.

“Damian,” Jon breathes, voice strained like he is in pain.

And then Jon’s hands slip beneath Damian’s T-shirt and Damian stills.

He thought he’d want this. He expected they would kiss, and suddenly it would be all uncontrollable urges and heat and desire, the way it’s supposed to be when you – when you _care_ about someone.

Jon is rubbing against him now, little moans escaping his lips, still gentle, still slow, and Damian wants him to stop, wants to push him away, because it feels weird in all the wrong ways and his knee-jerk reaction is _no, no, no_.

“God, how are you this gorgeous?” Jon says, mouthing along Damian’s jaw. “Do you even notice how much people stare at you?”

He does. Of course he does. He was raised by _assassins_.

“Jon,” he says, “wait.”

Jon stills. “Dami?” he says in a small voice. He scrambles off Damian, his back against the wall. His lips are glistening and swollen. “Are you okay?”

Damian sits up, patting down his hair even though he doesn’t need to. He hates how his hands are shaking.

“Did you want this?” says Jon, with a fragile expression.

“...I want to be with you.”

Jon nods, looking dazed, and rubs the back of his neck. “I get it. Too fast. We can...we can wait.”

Damian swallows. He does not think he will ever naturally enjoy it; he will have to train himself to.

***

**[Damian tries to come out to Jon. Tries.]**

“I’m…” What? Asexual? Is he really? He could just be a prude, and won’t _that_ be embarrassing to explain later on.

Apparently, he is silent a beat too long for Jon, whose lips press in a thin line before he turns and marches out the door. “I’m so sick of your _crap_ , Dami,” he throws over his shoulder before he shuts the door. (He never slams it - he wouldn’t slam it even if he didn’t have superhuman strength.)

Damian sits on the edge of the bed, numb, wondering if he has ruined one of the best relationships in his life. It is an unfortunately familiar feeling. But Damian is...good at making amends, despite what people think. He’s done it with his father, he’s done it with Richard.

Of course he’ll do it with Jon. Of course he will.

***

**[Damian agrees to have sex with Jon. It doesn’t go as planned.]**

“All right,” says Damian.

Jon looks up from his phone. “All right what?”

“I can...we can…” Damian trails off, embarrassed, averting his gaze, and God, maybe he _is_ just a prude. He makes a vague gesture with his hand.

“If you’re gonna make it sound like latrine duty, it’s a no from me.” Jon’s voice is chilly.

“No! I want to!”

“Not convincing me.”

Damian clutches at his hair. “What do you want me to say?” he snaps.

“I _want_ you to be honest about what you want from me!”

“I want…” Damian makes a frustrated noise. Why does Jon always push him like this? “I want us to be together.”

Jon gives him a flat look. “But without the sex.”

“Yes,” says Damian, gritting his teeth.

“So like...friends?” Jon’s confusion is clearly outweighing his annoyance.

“No, _not_ like friends! I don’t need or want sex in any kind of relationship! That doesn’t mean I don’t want…” He trails off, his face heating up. “I’ve never looked at anyone and wanted sex,” he mumbles to the floorboards.

Jon’s face is blank. “What, _anyone_? But you’ve called people attractive before.”

“I didn’t know ‘attraction’ meant ‘sexual attraction’!”

“Then what did you think it meant?”

“I don’t know, just generally acknowledging the regularity of their features, the way they walked or talked? Wanting to stare?”

“O...kay,” says Jon. “But you never thought about sex with them.”

“No.”

It is impossible for Jon to hide the hurt in his eyes. “And never with me?”

Damian is a man of many faults, but dishonesty is not one of them. “No.” Not as a fantasy, at any rate. He’d considered it, in the way one might consider canoeing. “Sex and relationships have always been separate for me,” he clarifies. “I never thought the two connected.”

Jon slowly takes off his glasses. In the cool evening light he looks eerily like his father. “I...need time to think about this,” he says at length.

Damian nods, pushing his hands into his pockets. He has suffered far worse than rejection.

***

**[Two days after the Arkham breakout, in his apartment, Damian finds something interesting in the newspaper. Note that he isn’t horribly injured in this scene.]**

Damian takes a sip of his coffee and promptly chokes on it when he opens the newspaper. A photo of Jon kissing him is plastered across the front page, Damian supine in his shredded, blood-spattered uniform and Jon bending over him and cradling the back of his head. It’s all a tad melodramatic from this angle. The headlines scream ‘FLAMEBIRD AND SUPERBOY HAVING TORRID AFFAIR?’

It’s by Vicki Vale.

“Oh my God,” he moans, scrubbing a hand over his face. “ _Oh my God_.”

He checks his phone; it’s already blowing up. Thirty-two missed calls, a hundred and seventeen texts. He checks two messages: one from his father (“Call now.”) and one from Richard (“........”). Then he turns off his phone and throws it in his bedside drawer, so he can pretend this isn’t happening.

Jon comes in from the bathroom with a towel around his waist, eyes glued to his phone screen and mouth agape. “Hey, uh, Dami – “

“I know.”

“Looks like we’ve got a lot of fans. We’re trending on Twitter at #1. Hashtag superflame. I think there’s already a meme.”

Damian sighs. This is not how he wanted his morning to go.

Jon prattles on, oblivious to Damian’s distress. “Minority of creeps crying ‘homosexual sinners’, yada yada yada. Oh look, some idiot thinks you’re Latino and…” His eyebrows go right up. “I’m not reading that out.”

Damian doesn’t even want to know. Then he realises _his family can read those comments_ and sort of wants to dig a hole in the ground and die there.

Jon’s phone rings, and he sucks his teeth. “Your dad,” he says.

“Don’t pick it up!”

“Hello, Mr. Wayne?”

Damian groans.

“Yes, uh, yeah...yeah, sorry, got a little carried away. I understand. Yeah, he’s right here.” He ignores Damian’s frantic flapping of hands and shoves the phone at him, and Damian has no choice but to take a deep breath and greet his father. “Baba.”

The peevishness in his father’s flat tone would not be obvious to an outsider, but Damian has had years of practice. “I don’t think I need to remind you why public displays of affection between superheroes is a bad idea.”

“No, Baba.”

“It will paint both of you as a target.”

“Yes, Baba.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“Thank you, Ba – _what_?”

“I don’t like repeating myself, Damian."

***

**[Dumb banter.]**

Jon gives a big, cheesy grin and points his index fingers at Damian. “At least I don’t have to worry about you cheating on me for better sex, huh?” he says, waggling his eyebrows.

Damian presses his lips together to stop himself from laughing, and then says dryly, “I could for better brains.”

Jon cringes. “Yikes."

***

**[Coming to a close.]**

“I’ve been thinking.”

“That’s new.”

Damian glares at him. “I want to go back to Pakistan. To Nanda Parbat.”

Jon looks at him, his face going blank.

“The League affects the people there more than those in America – not to mention the Arab countries they get most of their human resources from. Drain of wealth, assassinations, kidnappings. If I control it from the inside, I could help. I could change things.”

Jon slowly takes off his glasses.

“I know there are good people in the League,” Damian continues. He thinks of Ravi, of his careworn face and gentle hands. Of his sightless eyes. “They would be on my side. Jon,” he says, “it will be dangerous.”

Jon takes a shaky breath. “Let me come with you.”

“They know about us.” Everyone connected to them does. That damn newspaper made sure of it. Damian wants Jon to be with him, but he does not wish to put Jon in danger or dump him in a society where he will feel out of place. (As someone who was all but dragged to Gotham against his will, he knows culture shock better than most.)

“So?”

“So, nothing. I just want you to be sure.”

“I go where you go,” Jon says, his face heartbreakingly determined.

Damian nods carefully, then looks away. “Thank you.”

-end-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmu @ lilaclotuses.tumblr.com!

**Author's Note:**

> JonDami Discord: https://discord.gg/5f8ZJ5z
> 
> Damian Wayne Discord: https://discord.gg/GbrC2Ab (all ships welcome)
> 
> 18+ only for both of them.


End file.
